It appears that search has changed over the last few years, this is to be expected as brands grow and other fade, the same way as a rose looses it’s bloom. Things just change. But when we examine closely we see a shift it the type of things people are searching for. A few of the findings may surprise you. I am looking at the UK market so these figures may not be replicated in other countries.
Search trends that are on the up
It may come as no surprise to you that the name martin lewis has shot up as a search term in the last 18 months. This has been driven by his appearance on British breakfast TV and his website http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/, the arch nemesis of the banking institutions in the UK. He has shown thousands of people how to tackle the banks on bank charges and win. under his influence the British public has claimed millions of pounds in unfair bank charges.
Money saving another one on the up has seen a steady growth for the last five years but the rate of search growth has increased more rapidly since the downturn was spotted on the horizon
the search term jewellery rose sharply just before Christmas 08 as expected, but the amount it rose was a lot less then previous years indicating a cut back in spending on luxuries
Eco is another search term that is seeing a steady rise driven by soaring fuel prices, this I believe is not due to our save the planet ethos but is linked to the impact fuel is having on our pockets
SEO is another term growing massively as businesses come to see it as one of the most cost effective ways of getting qualified leads. Interestingly the term search engine optimisation has seen a slow but steady decline as the acronym becomes a part of mainstream Language.
SEM has sky-rocketed since mid 2007 closely related to SEO my prediction is this will continue to grow for the next two to three years and then level out
Search terms you would think are on the up
Cheap, you would think that in times of economic uncertainty cheap would be a search term on the up , but no. It is in fact the reverse it seems to be in decline this is also true of the synonym low cost, both on a slow decline which surprised me when researching this article.
Major brand names are seeing a slow decline but not as sharp a drop as you would expect with such names as Armani seeing the Christmas spike still there but not as big as previous years, but the searches throughout the year seem consistent with previous years with no major decline.
What does this mean for the average SEO , in my opinion you can test the pulse of the market by going through the data with such tools as Google Tends so before you finish your keyword research put a few of your phrases through Trends and see if you can see the future.
article inspired by
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/depression-has-hit-our-search-terms-593425